WHO WOULD HAVE thought that Prime Minister Freundel Stuart was a big fan of the NATION? Certainly not us, until earlier this week.
We never doubted for one moment that our leader was an avid reader of Shakespeare, Chaucer, or for that matter Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
If ever we did, any of his major speeches to date would be an immediate giveaway, including his maiden address to CARICOM leaders in St Kitts and Nevis last July, laden as it was with ornate English prose and ending as it did with these haunting words from Longfellow: “Not enjoyment and not sorrow, is our destined end or way; but to act that each tomorrow find us better than today.”
Indeed, those words sprung with ready ease from our Prime Minister’s lips, as did his comments during the recent Estimates Debate in the House of Assembly.
On that occasion, the Prime Minister sought to tear THE?NATION to threads by pointing out past sins and casting doubt over its reporting on the CLICO forensic audit report.
“I repeat I have never seen it [the report]. I saw reference to its content in a local newspaper. Let me see the report, I am not relying on anything I see in that newspaper,” the Prime Minister said then with a certain degree of disdain.
Again recently, a stone-faced Stuart told all of us who were expecting any form of running commentary on the Alexandra impasse, there wouldn’t be any. The same thing happened after he made a promise last December that “heads would roll” over the Eager Eleven fiasco.
It therefore took us by surprise – pleasantly so – this week to discover that the Prime Minister is among the 24 000 plus NATION Facebook followers.
To our added delight, he actually indicated his “Like” for one of our online articles.
So confused were we, that we phoned up his office for verification.
As it turns out, Mr Stuart is definitely a fan, but it’s his staff who have actually been doing the postings.
To quote Aristotle, another one of Mr Stuart’s favourites, we guess, “one swallow does not a summer make”.
